Iran just scored a massive propaganda victory

A screenshot from a video
released by the IRGC purporting to show the moment the 10 US Navy
sailors were arrested.Screenshot/IRGC/Twitter

A video purporting to show a US Navy sailor apologizing to
Iranian authorities for drifting into Iran's waters on Tuesday
has circulated on social media after it was broadcast by
state-sponsored television Wednesday.

Experts said the video represents a significant propaganda
victory for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the hardline
political and military organization that controls virtually every
aspect of Iranian society under the command of Iranian supreme
leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The video appears to show a young US Navy sailor — sitting next
to a fellow sailor among the nine others detained by the IRGC
overnight — saying he is sorry for the "mistake" to a
member of the IRGC, who asks him in Farsi if he
will apologize.

The unidentified IRGC soldier then asks the young sailor if it
was clear in the sailors' GPS system — which was confiscated by
the IRGC — that the US ships had entered Iranian waters. The
sailor replies, "I believe so."

Screenshot/Twitter

That is according to a translation provided to Business Insider
by Iranian research
analyst Amir Toumaj of the Washington, DC-based
think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

"The IRGC is loving this," Toumaj said in an email,
referring to the series of videos that have been released
Wednesday purporting to show the arrest. "It allows
them to humiliate the US military while demonstrating strength
and, in the end, cool heads."

The Pentagon confirmed Wednesday morning that the sailors —
nine men and one woman — were released and unharmed, but
the taped apology stands in stark contrast to US
Secretary of State John Kerry's insistence that the US had not
apologized to Iran over the incident. Vice President Joe Biden
also forcefully rejected the need for any kind of
apology.

"When you have a problem with the boat, [do] you apologize
the boat had a problem? No," Biden said in an interview with
CBS on Wednesday. "And there was no looking for any apology.
This was just standard nautical practice.

A senior State Department official told reporters Wednesday
that "I can say unequivocally that the US government did not
apologize to the Government of Iran in any way during the course
of this." That still appears to be true.

Sepahnews
via AP

In his daily press briefing on Wednesday, State Department
spokesman Mark Toner said the department was still determining the
authenticity of the video. But he noted that images of
prisoners are not supposed to be broadcast under Geneva
Convention terms.

Initially, the IRGC had accused the sailors of "snooping," noting
that their GPS system had registered the boats' entry into
Iranian waters, according to the semi-official Fars news
agency. The IRGC ultimately determined that the
sailors' entry was not intentional.

"Reviews, investigation, and review of their navigation
system show they entered Iranian waters unintentionally and were
not aware," IRGC Navy Commander Brigadier General Ali Fadavi said
in a statement following the incident.

"In the end, they and their diplomats accepted their
mistakes and were committed not to repeat them. Our officials
decided to release them, and the detained [sailors] were
released in international waters," he continued.
"This incident has many messages for the entire
world based on the power of the armed forces and intelligence and
strength of the IRGC."